Job-Hunting Facts of Life

As job searches begin for Class of 2009 PR majors, it is helpful to seek perspective from those who have successfully landed jobs as well as those who have been looking for a while.

As I was seeking “personal case studies” from last year’s graduating class, I came across an excellent first-person story on odwyerpr.com. For the past six months, Gloria Hightower has been aggressively seeking a full-time job. Here’s an insightful and well-written account about her search. Despite many frustrations, Gloria remains determined and confident that she’ll land a job.

My search for full-time employment in the PR field has been, in a word, awful. In anticipation of my December 2008 graduation, I started applying for positions in September.

Since that time, I have heard back from only one employer, but only to invite me in for an informational interview because there are no entry-level positions open within their agency at this time. That seems to be the running theme in my job search: “there are no positions that match your qualifications at this time.”

As a student who has just earned a Master’s degree and completed three internships, I am not sure how much more experience I could have gained as a full-time student. However, it seems that I don’t have enough experience for almost any job posting I have seen. Many of the positions listed as entry-level even request one to two years of experience!

Since school is finished, my full-time job is looking for a job. I am looking in three different cities: the Washington, DC area, New York City area and Philadelphia area. I have even “gone local” on my resumes that I send out to companies, using the addresses of my friends in each areas since some employers only want to hear from local candidates— still nothing.

I have applied to advertised openings and sent out unsolicited resumes as well. I have sent resumes to agencies, corporations, non-profits and recruiters. I even looked into taking a position as an intern just to get my foot in the door with a company.

However, the pay for internships is too low to even try to survive on since they are usually meant for school students (that is, if the internships available even pay at all). Many of them only offer school credit.

At this point, I am continuing to search and trying to keep a positive attitude about my future. I am trying to network with as many people as possible, and have all of my friends doing the same for me. It is a challenge though because I don’t know a whole lot of people who work in the industry and none of my friends work in PR either.

So, I’ve relied on making connections primarily through past internship supervisors and by emailing professionals or HR managers. I have built a few relationships, which I hope will benefit me in the future.

When I did my undergraduate work in marketing, I wasn’t really too sure about what I needed to do to gain a competitive edge once I entered the job market. So, I did one internship working in the marketing department of a non-profit.

Upon graduation, I could not find a job in marketing at all. As I started to study job descriptions of marketing a little more closely, I realized that I wanted to work not in marketing, but in PR. So, I decided to enter graduate school and pursue a Master’s degree in Journalism and Mass Communication with a concentration in PR.

This time around I was a better student, carefully choosing my courses and working on projects that would allow me to work outside of the classroom with real organizations. Additionally, I was sure to do multiple internships, because I knew that would be important when I began my job search.

I feel disappointed to have worked so hard then to have gone back and done it all a second time, and still not see any positive results.